AST (Auditory Stimulation and Training)

AST Reading and Spelling

AST-R/S combines the techniques of the best researchers in the field of dyslexia and reading to develop the underlying auditory, visual, and language processing skills critical to successful reading with specific, sequential reading and spelling lessons.

AST Comprehension

Auditory skills are improved through passive auditory training (listening to prescribed sound therapy music) and actively through the audio-vocal training lessons so that the learner gets clearer and more accurate information when listening. This impacts speech clarity, intonation, comprehension, verbal expression, and attention. Lessons are structured to stimulate and improve working memory, grammar and word usage, and reading fluency and comprehension.

This is a scientifically-based auditory training program that uses a combination of sound therapy and specific brain-based audio-vocal training lessons that specifically address the auditory skills needed for good listening and processing of auditory information. It includes all of the critical components to comprehension starting with stimulating and improving auditory processing and receptive language and building to self-guided logical reasoning.

AST Language

This is a scientifically-based auditory training program that uses a combination of sound therapy and specific audio-vocal lessons to develop language competency. Auditory processing skills are improved through the sound therapy and audio-vocal training lessons that help the learner get clearer and more accurate information when listening. This impacts speech clarity, intonation, comprehension, verbal expression, and attention. Lessons are structured to stimulate and improve working memory, grammar and word usage, and vocabulary, articulation, and expressive language.

Attention and Focus Integration

Awareness of attention focus and increase in the ability to attend to tasks will be developed through the Vestibular Integration Sequence. The combination of balance, movement, and dialogue between the clinician and student, guide the student in taking an active role in learning by teaching him/her to recognize when he/she is losing focus and consciously regaining control of his/her attention. Development of attention focus awareness and control will be integrated into all areas of the student’s program.

Optimal learning depends upon the brain and the body working together. Infinity Walkis a series of sensory and motor activities that prepare the mind for learning and open the doors to overcoming learning difficulties by developing increasingly more sophisticated neural networking in the brain. Infinity Walk helps organize the body in the most efficient way for each particular task, helps increase attention, and provides a tool for helping students to become aware of and control their internal time clock.

Core Learning Skills Training (CLS)/Reflex Integration

This program helps eliminate the interference caused by primitive reflexes and under-developed visual and motor skills. It is a series of physical balance and movement activities that improve visual skills, internal organization, coordination, self-awareness, self-control, and attention. Core Learning Skills Training uses The Listening Program to help the student gain a sense of reference point and an understanding of space and time, which are so critical for developing attention awareness and control and organization skills.

The Listening Program (TLP)

TLP is a music and sound stimulation method that focuses on re-educating the ear and auditory pathways for increased learning, attention, communication, listening, sensory integration, and physical coordination. This is accomplished through the use of specially modified classical music that stimulates the auditory system to take in a full spectrum of sound.

A home listening protocol is developed for the individual student based on his/her needs. The student will do approximately 15 minutes of listening twice a day at home 5 days a week. This is a very prescriptive program, requiring weekly consultation in therapy sessions or by phone.

PACE

At BBPS, we are proud to be providers of the Processing And Cognitive Enhancement (PACE) program. PACE was developed to train cognitive learning skills and it is what many affectionately refer to as “mental boot camp.”

The PACE program is a 12-week, intense, one-on-one, individualized cognitive training program that corrects and enhances learning skills in children as young as 6-7 years old. PACE focuses on the underlying cognitive skills required for learning. Your child’s processing skills are targeted so that s/he learns easier and faster. PACE is designed to make rapid changes so that your child experiences success right away. This causes self-esteem to soar and motivates your child toward success. The average improvement after 12 weeks of training is 3.6 years in processing skills!

What Does PACE Develop?

The primary cause of poor learning is that many skills needed for efficient learning , which should be subconscious (automatic) are not. For example, a fluent reader does not sound out words or pause to think of their meanings. These skills should be automatic. If they are not, comprehension suffers. The child who has to work consciously at sounding out letters and blending those sounds, uses all his/her effort on the act of reading. This means there is very little or not enough left over to actually comprehend the ideas that were read. Therefore, memory and understanding suffer. The child gets to the end of the page and has no idea what was read. PACE helps conscious and deficient skills become subconscious. Then the conscious mind can focus on comprehending, remembering and understanding. The result is that the child no longer has to learn to process information and can now process information to learn.

PACE is designed to develop the following processing skills:

Attention

Auditory Processing

Comprehension

Logic and Reasoning

Memory

Planning

Processing Speed

Visual Processing

AMPS (Attention, Memory and Processing Skills)

What is AMPS?

AMPS is a cognitive processing skills program based on proven ideas from the fields of behavioral optometry and cognitive neuroscience. These brain exercises are designed to improve mental processing speed, working memory, attention, sequential processing, spatial processing, visual and auditory memory, phonological awareness, motor planning, problems solving, and reasoning. These are processing skills needed for easy, independent learning and functioning.

How Does it Work?

The 46 different procedures provide variety and interest for the student, while reinforcing new skills in many ways.

AMPS is provided on a one-to-one basis.

Because it is literally developing new, more efficient neuro-pathways, or connections in the brain, frequency of instruction is critical to the process. For best results, it should be provided 4-6 hours per week in 30-60 minute sessions.

Just as practice and drill develops skills in sports, AMPS drills develop skills for learning and academics.

Who is it For?

AMPS is designed for those who want their brains to work better and faster. It is particularly helpful for those students diagnosed with reading problems, dyslexia, attention disorders, working memory deficits, visual and auditory processing disorders, and slow processing speed. Not just for students! AMPS has been beneficial for individuals with brain injury and adults (including seniors) desiring more healthy and flexible cerebral functions.

Master The Code

Developed by the people that created PACE, Master the Code is an intensive reading and spelling program that develops phonemic awareness (the thinking process critical to understanding sounds for phonics and spelling), and an understanding of the phonetic code of the language.

MTC uses procedures that evaluate, pinpoint, and develop to advanced levels the underlying mental skills required to assure fast and efficient learning-to-read skills. Some of these skills include:

Memory (the ability to remember the sound-symbol relationship)

Segmenting (the ability to separate or unglue sounds)

Blending (the ability to put together sounds to form words)

Auditory analysis (the ability to manipulate or analyze small changes in groups of sounds)

Processing Speed and Working Memory (the ability to retain incoming information and properly process it quickly)

Attention (the ability to stay on the given task)

Visualization (the ability to create and use mental images)

Ease into Reading

The Ease into Reading Program is based on a strong phonetic-based approach called the sound-symbol system. This means that for each sound we say there is a representative symbol or combination of symbols that goes with it. English is a complex language but beginning to read does not need to be complicated. It has been shown that students who have a strong sound-symbol understanding at an early level become both good readers and good spellers. This is because they have learned how to learn a symbol system. As they practice reading thy improve their memory until recalling symbols becomes an automatic skill.

Eyes on Track

There are millions of misdiagnosed students of all ages struggling with undetected near vision problems. Due to increased demands upon the visual system caused by computers, tablets, and small print in books this problem is getting worse! These students may have 20/20 vision or have corrected prescription lenses and yet they exhibit symptoms of near vision problems. Eyes on Track is an integrative program that improves both eye tracking and visual perceptual skills.

How do I know if my child has near vision problems?

Here are common examples of behaviors that are tell tale signs of children who are trying to cope with this undiagnosed problem:

Face too close to the page

Finger used as a pointer and closing one eye

Covering one eye to focus better

Vision is a Learned Skill

Sight is the ability to see, but vision is the result of a person’s ability to understand and interpret the visual information they are presented with. Only when a person has efficient visual understanding abilities do they possess the “readiness skills” needed to fully benefit from classroom instruction.

Balametrics

Brain processing efficiency directly impacts sensory integration ability, gross and fine motor skill, spatial awareness, and learning. Balametrics has designed programs and therapies that can be applied by therapists in a variety of different disciplines. The Balametrics program works because it addresses brain processing problems at the source. By engaging in sensory integration therapies that cause the neural networks in the brain to grow and become more efficient, excellent results can be achieved in many different areas. Balametrics can help with a number of specific problems and disorders, including:

ADD/ADHD

Central Auditory Processing Disorder

Dyslexia

Reading Problems

Handwriting Problems

Brain Injury/Stroke

Sensory Integration

Brain Gym

True learning is not just mental. It’s more than the memorization of information. Because the brain is informed by movement and the senses, true learning results from instantaneous moments of neural reorganization by which one is freed to think in new ways. From the simple act of organizing the musculature to sit or walk to more complex tasks such as coordinating the eyes, ears and hands to write, learning always involves patterns of physical activity.

Brain Gym consists of 26 different activities that offer a context for learning through structured play. Their inclusion in a classroom or on a playing field gives a safe, secure environment where learners can develop sensory, perceptual and motor skills, achieve cognitive, emotional, social, and physical growth, and actively participate in their own learning through explorations of action and balance.

In fact, by doing just some of the 26 activities for a few minutes each day the time they spend on learning is increased while time spent on discipline is dramatically decreased.

Literacy Speaks

Literacy Speaks! ® is a program designed to teach children letter-to-sound correlations and to introduce children to essential sight words with a sound targeted approach. The natural progression of the technique leads to literacy skills and improved speech intelligibility.